


making do and mending

by skogr



Series: lighting candles [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Post-Trespasser DLC, fluff with angsty edges, may contain mabari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 18:42:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4972069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skogr/pseuds/skogr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the hardest part is knowing when to stop. Post-Trespasser DLC. Cullen & Trevelyan in the aftermath of the momentum of the past few years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	making do and mending

Sometimes, in the hazy half-reality before Linnea is fully awake, she still has both her hands. She feels both sets of fingers curl and uncurl around the sheets, and just for a moment, everything is as it used to be. Not as it was in Skyhold, or even Haven - she’s back in the Circle, with eight fingers and two thumbs and nothing burning in the palm of her left hand. She can almost hear the distant bustle of the apprentices heading to breakfast.

The illusion fades as her eyes drift open, sunlight falling through the crack in the curtains and lying in a soft line across her shoulders. Instead of her left hand, so tangible and real only moments ago, the fabric brushes across the still tender skin where her left bicep now ends. It's healing well enough though still slightly puckered, and sometimes, she fancies, it has just the faintest green glow about it. Her imagination playing tricks on her, perhaps. She hardly dares think about the alternative.

When she’s back in the present she runs her right hand through her hair, shorter now, and another reminder of the time that’s passed. The sensation never fully fades, the spaces where her fingers used to be pulsing with a cool sort of emptiness. She sighs, but it’s not with longing or regret. It’s relief.

She may be down a hand, but she's just _her_ without it. Nothing borrowed or stolen or stumbled upon, nothing to glow or ache or be mistakenly revered for. Just Linnea.

It's not uncommon, Cullen tells her, to feel the phantom limb for years afterwards. Possibly indefinitely. That irks her a little, but it's a low price to pay to be alive. To wake up at all, to roll over and curl her remaining arm around his waist. To _live._ It's even worth the pain, when she wakes up gasping and clawing at a hand that isn't there. For that, she summons frost with her right hand, and clamps it on her left bicep until the cold throbbing drowns out the imaginary ache. It works, after a fashion.

Ice is all she summons now, despite her lifelong inclination towards fire. She could never master ice until Lydia had her separate the two between her hands, left for fire, right for ice. The physical distinction helped her distinguish the two in her mind's eye, and lent her a rather curious combat style, switching her staff from hand to hand. She supposes she'll have to adjust, somehow.

Fire won't come from her right hand, no matter how hard she tries. Now this - _this_ is frustrating, her poor technique finally revealed for what it is. One hand would be more than enough if she hadn’t set herself up to rely on two for almost arbitrary reasons. If she’d only worked a little harder at it, learned to unlearn her bad habits. She always found an excuse to ignore it, making time instead to learn new techniques, and she’s paying for it now.

So this is where she's at. Useless and restless and under strict instruction to take it easy. What they don't know can't hurt them.  

She clenches her fist, opens it slowly with an uneven exhale. The candle stays unlit, and she knocks it from the table in a fit of childishness.

Cullen pretends not to notice as she ducks sheepishly under the table to retrieve it, just frowning deeper at the papers in front of him. He doesn’t look up until she slams the candle back down on the table, his expression carefully neutral.

“It would be a simple matter to send for Commander Helaine, if you need - if you’d like her assistance.”

It’s so determinedly tactful she has to purse her lips against the smile that starts to form.

“Oh, I’m sure.” Linnea flicks the candle with her index finger, lets it roll across the table with a sigh. “But that wouldn’t exactly fit the ‘Inquisitor settling down for a life of quiet retirement’ image we’re trying to create, would it?”

Cullen watches her intently, putting his quill down to give her a look that is almost reproachful. “You could always actually _try_ settling down for a life of retirement.”

“But I’m not retiring.”

“You’re supposed to be resting,” he reminds her, and this time she does smile. “No working for at least a month, remember?”

“Do you?” she counters, and he frowns. She gestures at the papers in front of him. “This looks an awful lot like work, _Commander_.”

“It’s - it’s not,” he says quickly, which is such a dreadful bare-faced lie she starts to laugh, leaning over and snatching the sheets away from him before he can react. She holds them just out his reach and tuts as he makes a half-hearted swipe at them.

“Just so you know, if I _could_ set anything on fire, I’d be setting them on fire right now. To make a point.”

He raises an eyebrow. “But as you can’t…?”

“I’m going to drop them dramatically on the floor and enjoy the view.”

“The _view_?”

“Yes, as you scrabble around to pick them up.” She grins, and loosens her grip ever so slightly. “Remember to bend at the waist.”

His exhale of amusement is dry, but the weariness is entirely feigned as he pushes his chair back and crosses to the other side of the table to pluck them from her fingers. “Point taken,” he says, and puts them back down on the table and pushes them across to the other side firmly. “No more work.”

“I wasn’t making a _point_ , I really did want to see you pick them all up.”

He smiles, pulling her to her feet by her right hand, his own gently steadying her by her left shoulder. “I’ll leave the reports if you stop glaring at candles.”

It ought to be a joke, something light-hearted and amusing, but she ducks her head with a sudden rush of something heavy. She can't quite name it. Shame, perhaps, or just a bitter sort of uselessness. “Right. No more glaring.”

He rubs a soothing hand down her arm, and she lets herself lean into him and bury her face in his shoulder. “It’ll come, Linnea. Give it time.”

She bites back the retort on the tip of her tongue, cruel and reactionary and the kind that can’t be unsaid. _This is what you’ve always wanted, the woman without the magic, isn’t it?_ It wouldn’t be fair, because it wouldn’t be true, but it would have enough echoes of the truth to it to hurt. Both of them.

“It’s not just the fire," she says, “I can’t - it’s my staff, my sword -”

“We’ll work something out,” he says, and he sounds so _certain_ it frustrates her. She grumbles wordlessly but is unable to summon any real heat, and feels the brush of lips against her forehead. “But didn’t we just establish we’re not supposed to be working?”

“I don’t know how to stop,” she says, aiming for humour but hitting something nearer honesty. She shakes her head with a half-hearted laugh. “We’re not very good at this, are we?”

“We’ll work something out,” he repeats, so sure and steady, and she pulls back to get a good look at him, heart brimming over with fondness. “I’d say the first step should be romantic candlelight, but given the circumstances…”

The smirk that spreads from one side of his mouth is too soft and gently teasing to hurt, but she feigns dramatic offense as he starts to chuckle.

“You’re insufferable,” she tells him.

He cups her face with one hand, suddenly serious. “And yet, you suffer me anyway.”

She traces her thumb over his lips, the ghost of his smirk still there. She lets herself imagine, for one suffocating, breathless moment, how close she came to losing this. How close she could still be. She reaches tentatively for the memory of holding him like she thought she might never get another chance, the mark sending white hot pain up her arm in ever increasing waves. The echoes of that embrace still shiver between them, even after everything.

 _I know it's been a short marriage,_ she'd said, _but it's been a good one, hasn't it?_

 _Don't_ , he'd said sharply, and she'd just smiled through the tears threatening to spill from her eyes. There was a part of her that always thought that sooner or later, she'd have to give everything. She still does. She never asked for any of it, and she thinks of Ameridan echoing the sentiment before fading away into the icy air, leaving behind nothing but a heavy sense of grief. It wasn't a mark that killed him. It could still be her.

She thinks of Cullen lingering hopelessly, waiting for a lover who never comes back.

She presses a soft kiss to his lips and places her hand over his where it cradles her face. "Candles, then,” she says, pushing those thoughts as far away as she’s able. “We can make do without magic.”

 

-

 

The first thing Linnea set on fire was a candle, for which she received a rap on the knuckles and an admonishment not to play with the tinder box. Upon her protestation that she had never touched the box, she received another rap on the knuckles and further admonishment for lying. She now knows the real liar was her mother, eyes darting between candle and daughter with unease, and maybe even fear.

The second thing she set on fire was her brother's collar, and for that they took away everything. He escaped with little more than a ruined shirt - not quite one of the disasters Vivienne so coolly reminded her of - but she lost him too. He was always scared of her after that, knuckles white in his lap when he visited her at the Circle. Could she really blame him? Perhaps not. Did she?

It was either resent him or resent her magic, and when she set her third thing on fire - a training dummy, met with praise and approval - she chose him. She couldn't live life afraid of herself.

Yet still, it was always there. The uneasy knowledge that there was something inside her that could kill her. Something she couldn't be sure she can control. The mark wasn't so different, and when she woke up in Haven with just another possible way to die added to her list, she took it in her stride. She wasn't, she told herself, afraid of death. No one rapped her on the knuckles for that lie.

She kept it under a glove or closed in her fisted fingers, and if she was afraid of it, she never let herself indulge in that feeling. Unlike her staff, her fire and her ice, no one really shied away from it. Her own magic, toiled for and carefully controlled, was something to fear and recoil from. The mark? Unpredictable, unknown, and far more powerful than her - but divinely bestowed, and therefore revered. She hated that.

Cullen was wary of both her magic and the anchor. At least he had the good grace to be consistent.

He wasn't the fourth thing she set on fire, or even the four hundredth, but someplace along the line between that first candle and the last fire spell she summoned before she stepped through the final eluvian, she singed his mantle with a hasty immolate as demons poured forth from the rift. He brushed the sparks away with a sort of brusque irritation, and she thought, rather inanely, _oops_. His expression was inscrutable.

As far as first meetings go, it wasn't her finest. It was, in retrospect, just about the worst way she could have introduced herself, knowing him as she does now. _Why,_ she'd thought to herself irritably, upon their formal introduction, _did he have to be a templar?_ Perhaps he was thinking the same thing.

How they got from an uneasy accord to husband and wife - Maker only knows. He still fears magic for all his protestations, and she thinks he always will. That he doesn't fear _her_ isn't a sign of his changing attitude. He wants her to be the exception to the rule, but she isn’t. Every wandering apostate with a grudge is just as capable of being kind and gentle and merciful, and Linnea is just as capable of being as dangerous and ruthless and selfish. Being Inquisitor relied on this, relied on her capacity for hard decisions and hundreds of lives weighing on her conscience. Perhaps he’ll see this eventually, but - perhaps he won’t. Maybe magic will always be the one thing they dance around.

No marriage is perfect, she thinks with a smile. She’ll take it. It’s not perfect, but it’s theirs, and she’ll take it for as long as she's allowed.

 

-

 

It's Cullen who wakes her up this time. His dreams are never loud like hers, he never wakes up screaming or clawing, but she's awake instantly from the moment his breath turns ragged. He has implied sometimes, with the way he talks about them, that they used to be far worse, but even discussing them he is determinedly understated. She can never quite tease the whole truth from him, and she's long since stopped trying. She can’t be there with him, no matter how armed with knowledge she is. She can't crawl into his head and fight his demons for him, though she wishes she could. She can just be there afterwards.

After all this time, her heart still sticks in her throat as she watches him. There's not a lot she can do. Holding him runs the risk of panicking him, the touch turned menacing through the haze of his nightmare. He always knows what to do when it's her, and she wakes up more often than not already tucked in his arms and clinging desperately. She settles for a steady stream of soothing murmurs, hoping to wake him gently. No such luck.

After a few minutes - a short time for her, but so very long to be stuck in the cruelty of your own imagination - he jolts awake with a rattling breath. She curls around him instantly, fitting herself to the stiff lines of his body, tense and unhappy. He takes a breath, wets his lips.

"Sorry," he says hoarsely, and she kisses his temple, damp with sweat.  

"I can help," she says, and a flicker of unease passes across his face. Sometimes he takes her up on the offer of a cool hand across his brow, crackling with summoned frost. Not tonight.

He closes his eyes. "I'm fine." He weaves his fingers with hers where her hand lies across his chest. "Go back to sleep."

She almost does, head on his shoulder and mollified by his even breathing, but it isn't long before Cullen gently disentangles himself from her and slips quietly from the sheets. She thinks about staying, about pretending not to notice his absence. The soft glow of sunrise changes her mind.

They're staying not so far from his sister, in a secluded farmhouse Josie directed them to, insisting they take a break. Privately, Linnea thinks she has an ulterior motive, having never quite forgiven them for cheating her out of a wedding banquet. First order, relaxation, second order, Josie regrouping. She's sure to have something up her sleeve when they return.

Wherever it is they return to. Not Skyhold, that much she knows. Whatever it is that's waiting for them, some secretive semblance of the Inquisition masquerading as old friends reuniting. It's the first time in years she's been able to step aside from the whirl of politics and fighting, and from a distance, it all feels so much more chaotic. Maybe that's just being without Josephine.

Cullen is in a chair by the fire, and so is the mabari, still sound asleep on the rug. It's a perfect picture of domestic normality, the closest she's ever seen them. If she knew how to enjoy it properly, she's certain she'd be impossibly happy.

But her left arm aches and the world might yet be destroyed, even after everything she’s given.

“Want some company?”

He smiles - he looks exhausted and strained, but he smiles - and holds an arm out towards her, which is as good an invitation as she needs. The chair wasn’t built for two, but they make it work, Cullen pulling the blanket over her as she settles half in his lap, his arm around her waist.

“I woke you,” he says, regretful. “I tried to be quiet.”

“You were very quiet,” she tells him, “but you were also my pillow.” She nestles her head pointedly against his shoulder. “There, much better. As long as you don’t move this time, I think I can find it in my heart to forgive you.”

“I’m honoured to serve in such a vital capacity.”

“You should be,” she says, closing her eyes with a sleepy sigh. “It’s important work.”

“Anything for the Lady Inquisitor.”

“ _Not_ the Inquisitor,” she reminds him. “Not anymore.”

“The Lady Trevelyan, then.”

“Urgh, no.” She swats at him. “You know I hate that.”

“Very well. The Herald of - “

“Oh, shut up,” she says, and he laughs into her hair. “And before you even _think_ about starting with the ‘Mrs Rutherford’ -”

“My _wife_ ,” he says, and she opens her eyes just to roll them at him. “You can’t object to that, surely.”

“Well, I did marry you,” she says, pleased, and swings one leg around to straddle his lap, considerably more awake. “For pillow related perks, obviously.”

“Obviously.” He holds her by the waist with both hands as she leans in to kiss him, before pulling away with a wince.

“What’s wrong?”

“I fear your _pillow_ has gone numb from misuse,” he says dryly, rolling his shoulder. “I can’t feel my arm.”

“Me neither,” she deadpans, and his face performs a series of conflicted expressions that delight her. She starts to laugh before long, and amusement wins over wary concern as he joins her.

She only needs one hand to weave through his hair as she kisses him.

 

-

 

“There you are,” he says as she steps out into the yard, and throws something long and wooden at her. She fumbles it terribly, and it clatters to the ground.

“Not the most promising start,” he says cheerfully, and she just blinks at him.

“Excuse me?”

“The first rule of swordsmanship,” he says, picking up the stick and handing it back to her with an unnecessary flourish, the wooden grip towards her. “Don’t drop it, that really plays into the hands of your enemies.”

She grabs it from him with a glare. “I don’t imagine many enemies will be throwing them at me, for a start.”

He just grins, gives his own practice blade a twirl. He’s _showing off_ , something she’s not sure she’s seen him do before. It’s both rather endearing and absolutely maddening, and she is filled with a sudden and thorough competitiveness.

“Is this - is this a _training session_?”

“After a sort,” he says, “a refresher, if you’d prefer."

“I’m a mage!”

“Who fights with a sword.”

“A giant magic sword!”

He smiles beatifically. “It’s still a sword. I do actually know a thing or two about swords, you know.”

“I’m not sure this is the same, Cullen.” She feels foolish with the wooden blade held awkwardly in her weaker hand, and looks down at it dubiously.

He drops his own to his side for a moment to press a kiss to her cheek. “I knew a member of the City Guard in Kirkwall who lost his arm from the elbow in a nasty altercation with the Carta. It took him a while to relearn how to swing a sword, but once he did I think he was even better by the end of it. Of course, he had a good teacher."

"Oh, _really_."

"Humour me.” He runs a thumb over her cheek. “I hear you’re a very quick learner.”

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere,” she says, but she’s smiling. “Alright, Commander. Let’s try it your way.”

Cullen might pull every punch when they’re playing chess, feign ignorance of every clumsily placed rook she tries to sneak into opportune positions, but in this he makes no such concessions. She attempts to take advantage of his initial distraction, thumb still trailing down her cheek, but he blocks her almost instantaneously.

“You’ll have to try harder than that,” he says, and so she does, to little avail.

All things considered, she’s not as awful as she feared, but she isn’t what she used to be, not by any stretch of the imagination. Her muscle memory is wrong, her balance is off, and her right hand protests at every unassisted swing. Nonetheless, it’s not entirely discouraging. She’s spent a short while now out of combat, recovering. It was always going to be slow, and the frustration she might once have felt is tempered by Cullen’s steady patience, any lingering annoyance channelled directly into wiping that smug look off his face. He knows what he’s doing.

After almost an hour of mostly fruitless attempts to disarm him, she waves a weary hand to indicate it’s time for a break, and throws her sword to the ground. He grins and follows suit, and she sneaks a sideways look at him under the pretence of bending over to catch her breath. She’d always found him easy on the eyes, even when he was considerably less easy on the nerves, a brusque and closed-off ex-Templar that she felt certain was irritated by her mere existence. The years she’s known him have been kind, kinder than those that came before in many ways, and when she stops and thinks about it, she can see it. The way the lines of his face are softer, his cheeks less hollow. It’s a blessing she ought to count more often, between worrying about his headaches, his dreams, and the whole laundry list of things that could go wrong. She ought to count the things that go right a little more than she does.

Right now, he just looks happy; smug and pleasantly flushed, and she can’t resist the opening he leaves her. With a theatrical exhale of weariness, she twists suddenly to hook a leg round the back of his knees, aiming to topple him. It works, but not before he grabs her and pulls her down with him. Ever the gentlemen, he breaks her fall as she tumbles on top of him with an undignified grunt.

“Nice try.”

“Try?” She is indignant. “I’d say I succeeded.”

“If you count us both lying in the dirt as success.”

“It just so happens I do,” she informs him, and he reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear. Neither of them seem inclined to move, dirt or no dirt. Newlywed prerogative, she decides.

“I could get used to this.”

“What? Me on top of you?” She raises her eyebrows suggestively. “Or lying in the dirt?”

He rolls his eyes. “Just - _this_. Being married. Being normal, I suppose.”

She bursts into laughter. “Hitting each other with sticks in the yard? I don’t know how normal that can be considered.”

“A good deal more normal than our usual,” he says, and she laughs again, but softer. The usual being a month apart for every week together, nights spent stargazing through a hole in the roof, making decisions almost daily that affect the entire future of Thedas. She knows nothing about normal.

“I think I could, too,” she admits, “get used to this, I mean.”

She doesn’t say, _but we can’t_ , and she doesn’t say _, we might never get to_ , and he doesn’t say them either, though she can hear him thinking it as loud as if he does. She swallows, hears the uneasy sound of it all too clearly in the space between them.

“Lying in the dirt?” He says instead, teasing her. “Or being on top of me?”

“ _Commander_ ,” she says in her best scandalised tone, and the heaviness of the moment is gone, replaced by laughter. She rolls off him and lets him help her up, but doesn’t let go of his hand.

 _Take moments of happiness where you find them_ , Ameridan said. _The world will take the rest._

 

-

 

She inspects the puckered skin of her left arm with a detached interest. It's healing well. It was never as messy as a non magical amputation would have been, but it had been raw and painful. No blood, though, which she supposes she has Solas to thank for.

"He did a thorough job," she says, and from across the room Cullen makes a disgruntled sound. Whatever points Solas may have gained by being neat seem to have been cancelled out by causing bodily harm to his wife.

His reply is heavily sarcastic. "How thoughtful of him. Do remind me to thank him later."

"He saved my life," she reminds him, and he snorts.

"For now. Before he does his level best to kill us all, anyway."

"For now," she agrees, and runs a finger over the strange scarring that's starting to form. Solas is a minor point of contention for them, and not an issue she feels worth pressing. Given Cullen’s past, Solas' plans hold a unique bleakness for him. "Anyway, I'm thinking... a hook."

His lips twitch. "A hook."

"Very menacing and intimidating. I'll look like a weathered pirate." She curls the index finger on her right hand as visual representation, and grins. "You don't think so?"

"I can't say I do."

A trick of the light, perhaps, but she catches another glimpse of that green light twinkling from her left arm, and her blood runs cold. She startles and jerks her hand away, and her left arm knocks a glass of water off the table. It smashes noisily on the floor, and she curses.

"Linnea?"

"Just demonstrating my stunning coordination," she says airily, but whatever he sees in her face brings him quickly across the room. "It's fine," she says, not looking at him.

He crouches by her chair, gathers up her shaking hand in his. She feels unexpected and entirely unwanted tears prickling behind her eyelids, and blinks rapidly to discourage them. She wishes he'd taken the damn thing off at the shoulder. She wishes she hadn't become so used to the idea that she might actually reach old age that she can hardly breathe for fear of the opposite.

"Just jumping at shadows," she whispers, not trusting herself to speak.

"Alright," he says, and she suspects he knows more than he lets on. He kisses her knuckles. "So we light more candles."

"Very funny," she says, but she cracks a weak smile. "Cullen -"

"I've seen nothing to suggest it's still there," he says quietly, "as you said, he was thorough."

So he does know. She closes her eyes and swallows.

"It's so selfish of me, isn't it? There are still rifts out there -"

"And they're not even close to being our biggest problem. We can't close them, but we can contain them."

"That's not good enough. I'm no use without it."

"Is that what this is about?" He tilts her chin up gently, and she meets his gaze with eyes shining more than she'd like. "You were always more to the Inquisition than just a way to seal rifts."

"Maybe, but the anchor was always our most valuable asset. You can't deny that."

"And as it turned out, not a sustainable one. You don't keep resources that cost - that require -" He grips her hand with renewed fierceness. "Nothing was worth your life."

She honestly believes he says that both as her husband and as her commander, and that makes it all the harder to stomach.

"It's a good job you're not so sentimental with your chess pieces," she says, wiping away an escaped tear with irritation. "You'd never win."

He smiles at her then, and she grips his hand back with unsteady fingers. "Says the woman who thinks giving her queen for a rook is a fair trade."

"Fair? I never said it was fair. Guerilla tactics, Commander. You'll beat me in the end, I'm just trying to take as many of your pieces down with me as I can." She pauses, shoots him a look that's almost apologetic. "Solas has a lot more pieces than we do."

"Exactly," he says, "so we play smart, protect our best piece."

"Flatterer," she says hoarsely, and he laughs softly.

"Quite the opposite. I'm saying you're terrible at chess."

"I am _not_."

"Unspeakably horrible." He kisses her palm. "Worse, dare I say, than Dorian."

"Slander and lies. Defamation -"

“Let’s put it this way.” He grins. "I definitely didn't marry you for your chess skills," he says, and there's so much warmth in his words that she feels it more clearly than any phantom ache or twinge.

"I love you," she says, not the words she intends but the ones that come tumbling out nonetheless. She cradles his jaw in her hand with a possessiveness that surprises her. "And if I hadn't already married you, I'd marry you again."

"That can be arranged. I'm sure if we spoke to Josephine she could corral the Orlesian nobles  -"

"Don't," she says seriously, "don't even _joke_ about that."

He chuckles. "Once will have to do, then."

"It'll do perfectly," she tells him.

 

-

 

"You know," Mia says, "I never did wrangle the details of your whirlwind romance from my brother."

Linnea smiles as Mia joins her at the table, dragging her gaze away from the scene outside where Cullen is fast securing his position as most popular uncle with a little canine assistance. Another bizarre diorama of domestic contentment she isn't altogether sure what to do with. It feels like such a fragile thing, and yet so robust when right in front of her eyes that she almost scoffs at her prior conviction.

Mia is exactly how she always imagined her, warm and sharp all at once. Their friendship feels effortless, has done from the very first time she met her. _Family,_ a voice supplies, and strangely, it fits.

"Hmm?"

"I'm curious," Mia continues, placing a drink carefully within reach of Linnea's right hand. "Especially considering Cullen doesn't have a romantic bone in his body."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that."

"You wouldn't?" Mia grins. "Please, do go on."

"It was -" Linnea waves her hand inarticulately. "It was nice."

"Nice." Mia repeats, her tone so amused and dry and more than a little unimpressed that Linnea can't help but be reminded of Cullen. "I suppose you really are made for each other. Tell me he at least did something grand when he proposed, he's been annoyingly quiet about that as well."

"It was... a little impromptu."

Mia groans. "That's a no, then. All my ideas are wasted on him."

"No, it was -"

"Nice?" Mia suggests, laughter in her voice, and Linnea has to laugh too, a little embarrassed.

"I was going for _really_ nice, actually."

Mia's grin is approving. "I suppose I can accept that. You know, I thought - given the circumstances, I couldn't help but wonder if -" Her arched eyebrows are significant, but Linnea doesn't put the pieces together immediately.

"You couldn't help but wonder if...?"

"The pitter patter of tiny feet," Mia says, and Linnea just gapes at her.

"What?" She blurts out before she can stop herself, and Mia leans forward with a mischievous look she's only ever seen her direct at her siblings. It is both terrifying and strangely gratifying; she is flattered to be counted among them even as she wants to hide underneath the table.

"I don't have to explain to you how it works, do I?"

" _No,_ " Linnea says flatly, and tries her hardest to suppress the pink flush she's sure is creeping across her face. Likely to no avail.

“No? Are you sure?” Mia rests her chin in her hands, her smile turned exceptionally innocent. “Because there’s this strange and mysterious correlation between children and getting naked, you see, and I know you _think_ you’ve been ever so subtle, but the walls aren’t as thick as you -”

“Mia,” Linnea pleads, positive she’s now turned a very fetching shade of red. “I’m aware. Of the, er. The correlation. Could you _please_ -”

“Is it a magic thing? I’ve always wondered if mages knew a trick or two, you never heard about pregnancies in the Circle, anyway -”

Linnea has never wanted for both her hands more than in this instant; one is not sufficient to bury her face in. If Corypheus burst in through the door, it would honestly be a relief. She’d greet him like an old friend. “We’re not talking about this.”

Mia seems to take pity on her, though her grin is as sharp as ever. "You've never thought about it? Children, I mean, not sex. You’ve evidently thought about that quite a bit."

“ _Mia_.”

Mia settles back in her chair, looking inordinately pleased with herself. “Well, have you?”

She takes a moment to collect herself, peeking out from between her fingers before finally lowering her hand and giving Mia’s question proper consideration. There’s something about it that makes her uneasy, though she can’t quite articulate what it is.

"Mia, I never -" Linnea gestures helplessly. "I never thought about any of this, I never even thought I'd leave the Circle, let alone _lead_ the Inquisition. Neither left much room for thinking about - about _tiny feet."_

Mia's expression softens. "You're not Inquisitor anymore."

"No," she says slowly, unsure how much she should reveal. "I suppose not."

"Does that leave room for thinking about them?"

"I don't know." Linnea shoots her a stricken look. "There are a thousand reasons not to. I -"

"I'm not trying to pressure you." Mia places a reassuring hand over hers. "I just feel I should tell you that my brother is definitely thinking about them. Perhaps you already know, he's easy to read."

"Like a book," Linnea agrees, and Mia laughs.

"I don't know if I can explain how bizarre it is to me to see him like this, wanting these things. _Married_." Mia glances out the window. "I don't think he ever really thought about it, either."

"Templars can marry. Children, too."

"Well, yes, but Cullen’s not one to divide his loyalties. He was _devoted_." Mia shakes her head. "Has he said anything to you?"

"No."

"If I might be so bold as to offer advice," Mia says, "talk about it with him."

Linnea feels a rising rush of panic. "But what if I don't -"

"Then you don't." Mia smiles at her. "All that really matters to him is having your undivided attention. The rest is just details, trust me."

Linnea squirms in her seat and Mia artfully switches from serious to teasing at her obvious discomfort. "Are you sure I don't need to tell you how it works?"

"How what works?" Cullen says, ducking into the doorway curiously, Linnea hastily letting out a 'nothing' as Mia lets out a cheerfully exuberant 'sex'. His expression is a truly beautiful thing to behold.

"He goes even pinker than you," Mia says delightedly, and Cullen scowls.

"I apologise profusely for my dreadful family," he says, and Linnea shakes her head in amusement as Mia grins wickedly at him.

"Would you rather meet mine?" she asks sweetly. "The estate is so lovely at this time of year."

"Maker, _no,_ " he says with such heartfelt fervour that she and Mia take one look at each other and collapse into laughter.

 _Family_ , she thinks. She likes it.

 

-

 

Cullen has a headache. Not one of his worst, but enough that he drops the pretence, his walls of disgruntled "I'm _fine_ "s and dogged determination of carrying on as normal. It’s the only way she can really tell that he’s not alright; he still hides a lot of it from her, whether intentionally or not.

Now, she has found an assistant in the form of their mabari, Chester, who seems to have a knack for knowing when his silent company is what’s needed, not his seemingly limitless energy. In these moments, he's even less like a war dog then when he's lying on his back gazing adoringly up at an exasperated but charmed Cullen.

He's curled up protectively at Cullen’s feet, one eye open, and as she approaches he lets out a very quiet growl. Cullen hushes him absently but he glares up balefully at her anyway, and she sticks her tongue out. She's fond of Chester, and he's good for Cullen, but sometimes - she could _swear_ that damn mabari is jealous. It brings out a rather childish side to her.

"He's _my_ husband," she mouths at him, and his ears flick in irritation.

"What's that?" Cullen says, and Chester shoots her a reproachful look that says clear as day, _you disturbed him._

"You started it," she mutters, and perches on the arm of Cullen’s chair. He leans into her side as she weaves her fingers gently through his hair. "Can I get you anything?"

He doesn't answer, just pulls her closer and sighs. It's a tired sigh.

She'd asked Cassandra once what the long term prognosis was for those who stopped taking lyrium, especially after a solid decade of use before that point. _There isn't much precedent,_ she'd said after a very long pause, _but Cullen is stubborn_. Her careful omission spoke volumes.

He grips her knee and she leans over to kiss his forehead. He's warm to the touch, just the wrong side of feverish.

"I'll get you a cool cloth," she says softly, and makes to get up only to be gently tugged back.

"No, it's -" He closes his eyes. "If you could -"

She understands, leaning in again to place a hand across his brow. _Be cold_ , she thinks firmly, and he sighs as her fingers turn cool against his clammy skin. He's still stiff against her side, because for all the trust he puts in her, he's still afraid. She's never truly sure if he finds this as soothing as he claims, or if he's trying to prove something to her. To himself.

Whatever the truth of it, it evidently helps to some extent, and some of the tension even seeps out of him as his forehead grows cooler. He wraps his other hand around her wrist, holding her there.

It's a long while later that he opens his eyes, and she pulls her hand away, replacing it with another soft kiss. He makes a low mournful sound and she places it back on his brow with a quiet laugh. He nestles into her thigh, pliant with exhaustion.

"Now who's the pillow?" She murmurs, laughter in her voice.

She feels his smile curl into her leg through the fabric of her leggings.

 

-

 

Not that she’d ever say it out loud, but she’s getting rather fond of Ferelden. It’s beautiful in a sort of humble way, the rolling hills and low lying mist and ever permeating damp. They’ve taken to going for long walks in the surrounding area, Chester bounding in and out of sight with delighted barks. Especially when Cullen is recovering from a particularly bad episode, the fresh air seems to do him good.

Today, it’s raining. Drizzling, more than anything, her hair curled about her face in wet tendrils. She’s finding that she rather likes that, too. They walk in companionable silence, hand in hand, Chester a speck in the distance as he chases after some unfortunate wildlife.

"Am I to surmise," Cullen says suddenly, in the sort of determinedly casual tone that indicates a very serious question is to follow, "that your family wouldn't like me?"

She manages not to laugh, but only just. "Is that really what you've been thinking about?" He glares at her, and she relents. "Not at all, I think they'd love you."

He frowns and looks abashed at the same time, which is, in her unbiased opinion, adorable. "But -"

"Well, you were a Templar, which is a very noble calling, serving the Chantry and all that. The Trevelyans are nothing if not devout."

"Yes, but I left."

"To serve the Inquisition! To fight injustice alongside the Herald of Andraste herself, their _suddenly_ most beloved daughter -"

" - Ah."

"Not to forget, of course," she says, with a grin she can't repress, "you were the most eligible bachelor in Orlais."

He splutters indignantly. "I was not."

"Your posterior was the talk of the town from Lydes to Val Royeaux itself."

"My post- it most certainly was _not_."

"Oh, I was lucky to snap you up when I did. Very fortuitous."

He catches her by the waist as he grumbles half-heartedly, burying his head in her hair. She laughs quietly as she weaves their fingers together again.

His next sentence is gracious but reluctant, though she suspects he isn't aware of how obvious he's being. "Would you like to visit them?"

"Not really."

"But they're your family -"

"Look," she says, "I was seven when I went to the Circle, they hadn't all that much time to invent an appropriate personality for their heir apparent, and considerably more time to pin it on someone else and forget all about little old me. We have mages every now and again in the Trevelyan line, it is _rather_ a nuisance. We're not exactly dirty little secrets, but we aren't cherished offspring, either. I suppose I _am_ still fond of them in the abstract, but I'm perfectly happy to keep it that way. There's really no need to force an awkward reunion. They can score a few points for producing the Herald of Andraste, and I can pretend they'd still think of me as a person."

Cullen closes his eyes briefly, as if her flippancy pains him. "I'm... sure they do."

"And I'm sure they _don't_ ," she say with a light laugh. "They wouldn't be the only ones. Though I do appreciate your valiant attempt at tact."

"At least Josephine taught me something," he says drolly, but his fingers tighten on hers uncomfortably. "You are a person," he adds quietly, and she can't for the life of her figure out quite what he means by that.

"Rather than what? A religious figure?" She stops walking abruptly, and he with her. "A mage?"

Cullen goes very, very still all of a sudden, the only movement the misting of their breath in the cool air.

"Because," she says, barrelling on determinedly despite her misgivings, "I'm those things too."

For a few heart-stopping moments, she's not sure if he's going to say anything, but he lifts their clasped hands to his lips and kisses her knuckles with a desperate sort of fondness.

"Yes," he says finally, unexpected in its simplicity, "and I married all of you."

There they are: those pricking tears that seem to well up more often than not these days. She squeezes his fingers fiercely. "Even the parts that scare you?"

"All of you," he repeats firmly, and wraps his other arm around her waist. It's not a denial of his fear, which is something. This is something she can believe. "Every last inch."

A slow grin creeps across her face before she takes a step closer and adopts her most serious expression. "In that case - and there's no easy way to tell you this - but, well -"

Cullen’s brow furrows. "Linnea?"

"- since marrying you, I seem to have misplaced at least ten inches of one of the arms you married -"

He groans and tugs her even closer. "Maker, Linnea, I thought something was _wrong."_

"Too soon? As if I could resist -"

He shuts her up effectively enough by kissing her, and they wrap themselves around each other in the mist and rain until Chester knocks into them with the force of a cannonball, sending all three flying into the mud.

She can't stop the laughter that bubbles up, convinced more than ever than Chester knows exactly what he's doing. She sits up and points a stern finger at the mabari.

"Look, this is _my_ husband, and if I want to have my wicked way with him, then I can, understood?"

Chester licks a sloppy line up her cheek, and she takes it for the peace offering it is, though she can't stop rubbing at the damp he leaves behind with her sleeve.

"I suppose I'm practically a real Fereldan now," she says, letting Cullen haul her to her feet. "Covered in mud and mabari slobber."

"Not in the slightest," he says with a slow grin. "A real Fereldan wouldn't complain about it."

 

-

 

She’s getting better with the practice sword, and they’ve even managed to work in a long wooden pole to their exercises, to fill in for her staff. It’s a little awkward still, but with a little work, she’s actually starting to believe she’ll be able to wield both to a level she deems acceptable.

Her spirit blade, or course, isn't like a true sword; it appears when she calls it and otherwise needn't be accounted for. The puzzle as it stands is what to do with her staff when she does have need of it, how to juggle both briefly with half the hands she’s used to.

It's Cullen who encourages her to use her left arm, which she had written off as an option given its annoying tendency to grasp uselessly for things with fingers that aren't there. True enough, she can't grip the way she's used to, but pressing her bicep into her side provides enough pressure and dexterity that she can, with practice, manoeuvre her staff beneath it.

Perhaps, she concedes, he does know a thing or two about swords. There’s no need to say it aloud. She’s still lacking fire, but her right arm is getting stronger, and she’s starting to feel like the time for inaction is over.

She used to bring their sessions to a close after an hour or so, either by feigning exhaustion or by derailing it with playfulness. Letting him pin her to the ground with a quirk of the eyebrows, or begging off for the day on account of her arm hurting. She doesn’t do that so much now, staying serious and focused long after Cullen seems ready to wrap it up and return to the charade of husband and wife living quietly during peacetime.

She's almost ready to rejoin the fight. He sees it in her eyes, and for all that he’s helped her achieve it, the reluctance is his expression is hard to miss.

 

-

 

Cullen has set up a pile of furs and rugs by the fire in what she can only assume is one of those terribly Fereldan things, and to her utter delight, on cool evenings when not otherwise occupied by Chester, Cullen himself stretches out on them with his eyes closed. She’s managed to bite her tongue and resisting teasing him about it out of fear he’ll stop, but she does like sitting cross-legged on the chair and watching him, an amused smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

This time, he is apparently no longer content just to be observed, and beckons her over with a raised eyebrow. She pretends indifference for a few moments, before putting her book down with an unconvincing sigh and tucking herself against his side, mostly shielded from the fire by his body. Even so, it’s swelteringly hot. She kicks off some of the furs he tugged on top of them.

“How can you _stand_ it?” she groans, and he chuckles into her hair.

“It’s nice.”

“I’m being burned alive!”

“Says the pyromancer,” he says, sliding a hand down her thigh and tugging her leg to slot over his. “Anyway, I have a solution.”

She’s starting to see where he’s going with this, from the way he’s pressing her carefully to him. “And what might that be?”

“Less clothes,” he murmurs, and her lips meet his with a grin on her face. He pulls her on top of him as they kiss, and the full force of the fire’s heat hits her.

“Smooth,” she mocks him, and he shushes her with another kiss, fingers spread across her back. She isn’t sure she really wants to bare her skin to the intense heat creeping through her layers of clothes, but she’s already far too invested in the way he’s moving underneath her. His thumbs play at the gap of skin where her top has ridden up, and she thinks, _well._  Maybe she’ll take her chances with the fire.

She lets him peel her top off before she starts tugging at his, and then it’s warm skin against warm skin, and the fire pales in comparison to the way this sets her alight. Cullen pushes himself to sit upright, one arm behind to steady him, and the other to hold her as she straddles his lap, kissing him breathlessly.

He’s always so thorough, and for all the urgency of the moment he doesn’t abandon his principles now, trailing kisses across her neck and shoulders, leaving a hot, wet path between her breasts. She makes an impatient noise in the back of her throat.

“Sorry,” he says, not sorry in the slightest. He weaves his fingers through her hair, pulling her head back gently and mouthing at the underside of her jaw. It is, as far as apologies go, pretty good. He tugs just a little harder at her hair and she sighs, back arching further as he nips at her ear. “Too much?”

“You know it isn’t,” she tells him, and he grins into her neck.

“Just checking.”

“Stalling,” she corrects, and his fingers slide from her hair and down her back, stopping at her hips and lifting her off his lap and onto her back in a sudden, swift movement. The furs brush pleasantly against her skin and she can feel his breath hot on her stomach.

“I have another proposition,” he says, and she lets her eyes drift shut as his thumbs rub teasing circles on her thighs.

“Enlighten me,” she breathes, but he doesn’t answer straight away, neither speaking nor moving beyond the soft movement of his thumbs. She pushes up into his hands, only to be gently pushed back down.

He kisses the inside of her knee. “Let’s stay.”

Her eyes snap open. “What?”

“Let’s stay here,” he says, his thumbs still tracing tantalising patterns on her skin. “This doesn’t have to be temporary." 

“Cullen, you - please, we can’t seriously have this conversation while you’re -” She can feel his breath at the tops of her thighs. “You’re a horrible man and I hate you.”

“Well, I love you,” he says, amused but deadly serious nonetheless, “and I want this. I want you, and I want this life.”

Coming from him, the words are horribly seductive, and she can’t afford to let herself consider them too closely with her guard let down this way. Not to mention every movement his hands make is nothing short of torture. She presses the heel of her palm against her eyes. “Can we discuss this - _after_ -”

“After what, exactly?” he says innocently, and she shifts so she can glare down at him. “Oh, I _am_ sorry. Were you expecting - “

“ _Cullen_ ,” she hisses, and he laughs, pressing a kiss to her hip.

“After,” he promises, and finally his mouth is exactly where she wants it to be, her head falling back with a pleased sigh.

It’s enough until it’s more than enough, and then it’s not enough at all and she’s tugging him up and pulling him into a kiss. The novelty of time and space and the luxury of enjoying both has not worn off; after what feels like a lifetime of stolen moments - and _interrupted_ moments - she still shivers with the thrill of being on no one’s terms but their own. This is precisely what he’s offering, and it’s hard not to want it. Impossible, even.

It’s hard not to think about it, even caught up in the moment as she is, when Cullen is as prone as ever to breathing _I love you_ in the spaces between their gasping breaths. He’s hot and solid above her and she arches into him pointedly, her fingers tugging at his trousers impatiently.

“Less clothes, remember?” She says, and his chuckle is low and rich.

When he pulls her into his lap again, his bare skin burning against her, she tightens her fingers in his hair and let him guide her onto him with a shaky exhale. He buries his face in her shoulder and lets her set the pace, teeth grazing over her collarbone. Here, their perfect choreography loses its smoothness somewhat, fluid movements turning a little desperate as her thoughts turn more and more disjointed. Cullen makes a sound that she might recognise as amused, were she more than half-listening, and wraps a steadying arm around her. She’s more than happy to cede control, and sure enough, before long they’re both gasping against each other's mouths and murmuring affectionate nonsense, perhaps Linnea more than him. She always did have trouble staying coherent, and it always did make him laugh. She kisses the laughter from his mouth with defiant sheepishness before falling back onto the floor with her eyes closed, pleasantly exhausted.

And then, because sex always leaves her wrung out and strangely vulnerable, she opens her eyes and sighs softly. Her voice sounds small even to her ears. “I _do_ want to stay. I do, I just don’t know if we _should._ ”

“We can stay on in an advisory capacity, but you said it yourself. Solas knows you, he knows exactly what you’ll do. We need to pass on the responsibility, we’ve done our part.”

He moves to lie beside her, and she places a gentle hand on his cheek. “It’s not over yet.”

“I know. But we can step back. Haven't we earned it?”

“Maybe,” she whispers, so quietly she’s not sure he catches it. She’s not sure if she wants him to catch it. She’s also desperately sure that she does.

“Let’s make a life,” he murmurs, and she squeezes her eyes shut, resolve rapidly failing. She can’t hold on to all the reasons she thought she had for saying no; they slip through her fingers like sand and she’s not sure they were ever anything more substantial.

“And if the world ends?”

“Then we’ll be together,” he says, and kisses her forehead. “Perhaps you don’t recall; we got married. I think there might have been a clause in there somewhere about that.”

She opens her eyes then to roll them at him, and then kisses him with a bright sort of energy she hasn’t felt in months. “It’s a tempting proposition.”

“How tempting, exactly?”

“Very,” she says, and his smile says he knows exactly what she means.

“I’m glad.”

“I still want my fire back,” she tells him, “and if there’s call for me to act as more than an advisor, I’ll do it.”

He pulls her closer. “Of course. As will I.”

“And -” She hesitates, the next words stuck in her throat. Maybe she needn’t say them. Maybe the weight that’s been hanging from her shoulders since that last conversation with Mia needn’t be something she airs. Maybe she doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Yes?” He rubs a thumb between her shoulder blades. “Linnea?”

“There’s a good chance our children will be mages,” she blurts out, and Cullen blinks: once, twice. A small eternity passes. She winces and hides her face in his shoulder. “Our, ah, hypothetical children, that is. That... wasn’t how I intended to broach the subject, and I don’t know precisely how it works, but the odds are - well, they are what they are.” She takes a deep breath. “I just thought before you got too lost in your domestic fantasies, you ought to know -”

“Linnea, I know,” he says finally, “I know.” His voice is steady enough that she pulls back from the crook of his neck to look him in the eye.

“And?”

“And,” he says, “ _hypothetically_ -” He presses a teasing kiss to her nose, “they’d be very lucky to have such a talented mother at their disposal."

She hardly dares breathe. “And their father?”

“Is very good at putting out fires,” he says dryly, and she starts to laugh, something a little like relief and a lot like happiness rising from the pit of her stomach.

“Hypothetically,” she says, “that’s good to know.”

 

-

 

Chester has brought her a shoe. It’s not one of hers or Cullen’s. He looks up at her with an unblinkingly proud expression, as if to say, _see?_ She thinks it might be a peace offering, but she’s unclear on the details.

“Thank you,” she says solemnly, and that seems to satisfy him well enough, curling up at her feet with a happy little half-bark of delight. She scratches him behind the ear, imitating the way she’s seen Cullen do it, and his eyes close. She feels inordinately accomplished.

“That’s it,” she says, “that’s the final piece.”

“Hmm?” Cullen doesn’t look up from where he’s reading by the fire, brow furrowed.

“A mabari just gave me a gift. I’m a real Fereldan.” She gestures to where Chester is lying at her feet. “This is the initiation ceremony, isn’t it?”

Cullen chuckles, but his reaction is ever so slightly delayed. Enough to make her suspicious. “Congratulations.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “What are you doing?”

“I - what?” He looks startled. “Just reading.”

“Reading what?”

When he doesn’t answer, she nudges Chester aside to stride over to his where she glowers down at him. “It’s - Leliana - what are you -”

She pulls the paper from his hand with an exaggerated gasp. “Is this _work_?”

“It’s a letter from Leliana,” he says weakly, “it’s just - just keeping me informed -”

“It _is_ work,” she says triumphantly, and yanks it out his reach again, holding it above her head. “I’m shocked, Commander. I thought we’d agreed -”

“Linnea -”

“No excuses,” she tuts, “the rules were simple, and this is in clear violation -”

“ _Linnea_ ,” he repeats, his tone urgent. She stops her teasing diatribe.

“What?”

She follows his eyes to where she’s holding the letter aloft only to see it distinctly _smoking_ , paper curling and crumbling away underneath her fingers. She can feel the heat now she’s aware of it, and for a moment she can only gape above her. _Fire_. She set them on fire.

She drops it with a yelp into the fireplace, looking back to Cullen with a stricken look on her face, but he’s laughing, quiet and proud. She wants to laugh with him, but she needs to be sure it isn’t a fluke. She looks down at her hand with desperate hope, closes her fist for a few seconds, and opens it cautiously, hardly daring to believe. In her palm, a perfectly formed flame, small but flaring brightly. She closes her palm again with a gasp.

“These things take time,” Cullen says, smiling crookedly as he rises to stand next to her, “and apparently, a little nudge -”

She flings herself delightedly at him, arm round his neck and her palm still warm, and he catches her with another quiet laugh. This is the final piece, the last thing to slot into place and make her feel truly like herself again. She feels giddy, breathless and light as air. She’s _her_. There’s nothing else missing or added or borrowed or stolen.

As she tangles her fingers in his hair and kisses him through her laughter, it doesn’t even occur to her to miss the phantom set of ghostly fingers that finally stop haunting her.

 


End file.
